CSI opens with a view outside at night as someone struggles for their lives to escape after being buried alive. But just when they get to the road, a car hits him. The next day, Greg is examining the body as Nick walks up to help. The driver of the car is crying hysterically as Nick and Greg talk. Dave is examining the body and tells them that his injuries are consistent with him having been injured before the accident. Nick is suspicious and walks up to the edge of the road and sees blood drops, indicating the victim had walked up to the road from the dirt. They walk along the dirt ground before finding the spot where the victim had been buried alive.

Detective Crawford is speaking to Ms. Haymond, the driver of the car. She is talking very fast as she explains what happened when she hit the victim. The woman explains she was reaching for some potato chips when she saw the guy out of nowhere. She tried to do CPR on him but it didn’t work. The detective lets her know he will process her so she can leave.

Greg is processing the burial site while Nick comes up to investigate too. After sifting through dirt for evidence, Greg finds green fibers and Nick finds regal coral snakeskin that doesn’t belong in the area.

Robbins tells Cooper about the victim, who has injuries consistent with the car accident. The injury to his neck is likely from being stabbed and glass shards in the wound make them think he was stabbed with a bottle. He also has wounds on his cheek from what could be brass knuckles. Finlay comes in to tell them the victim is Jimmy Turelli, an ex-convict who once worked with the infamous Sam Braun. He got out of prison two weeks earlier.

Morgan tells Hodgins she found traces of what could be baby powder in the abrasions on Turelli’s cheek and the metal alloy Robbins found is brass. Hodgins tells her the green fibers come from a type of wool made for expensive suits. Morgan gets results on the glass shard and finds it is from fine stemware. As she examines the fiber again, she gets an idea.

The next scene shows champagne glasses on top of a pool table. Morgan carefully hits a ball and sends it past the glasses and into one of the holes. They figure that Turelli was playing pool and a method could have been using trick-shot play and that some of the items used in the game are consistent with the fibers and shards found on him. Morgan is about to demonstrate what happens when players get a victory and break all the champagne glasses, but she’s only faking Cooper and Hodgins out. Morgan then tells them about a pool tournament at one of the hotels.

Morgan and Greg talk to Ms. Massey at the championship where she confirms she knew Jimmy. She tells them that Turelli paid for the entrance fee of a player known as the Hornet. As they watch her play, Greg and Morgan notice the bridge she uses on her pool is similar to the wounds on Turelli.

Greg and Morgan talk to the Hornet, aka Natalie Barrow, but she claims to have no knowledge of Jimmy’s death. Morgan confronts her with the bridge on her pool cue.

Ms. Barrow tells them that she last saw Jimmy at his pool hall where he worked as a bartender, the Vegas Rails. She assures them she had nothing to do with Jimmy’s death and willingly allows them to examine her bridge. Then she gives them information that Jimmy was looking forward to a midnight pool game that was supposed to be really good for him.

Sara and Morgan go to the Vegas Rails but were unable to contact the owners of the bar. The lights go in and they see evidence that this is their primary crime scene. Morgan finds a bridge underneath the pool table that has blood on it. Sara finds a broken champagne stem, confirming something else happened after Natalie made her winning trick-shot. They also find evidence that a ball rolled through blood, but there’s no cue ball so they believe the killer took it. Morgan looks around the pool table for signs of cheating before finding another snakeskin inside one of the pockets.

Finlay tells Cooper a holding company, Derosa, owns the Rails and there is no name associated with the place. They think it could go back to Turelli’s mob ties and Finlay tells Cooper the girls found a photo of a pool stick wrapped in snakeskin. The man in the photo with the pool cue is Calvin Tate, who has a history of identity theft and counting cards. He paid for drinks the night of Turelli’s death around the time of the big game Turelli was looking forward to.

Greg and the detective go to Tate’s place, where a young woman, Zoe, answers claiming to be his wife. She says Calvin isn’t home and is surprised to find out Jimmy is dead. When asked, she said she used to wait tables at the Rails. Just then, a man calls for ‘Bubbles’ and Greg and the detective go inside to see Calvin. He is surprised to find out Jimmy is dead, but denies killing him. He informs them that Turelli was on the phone with Elise Massey and she had taken over the Rails. When Zoe comes in, the detective notices a bruise on her arm, but she claims she fell. They tell Tate not to leave town.

Finlay tells Cooper that she found evidence that there was more to Massey’s management than just playing pool. She tells him that Morgan and Sara found a notebook with codes for a secret site within the Rails website. She enters the password where they see an ad with half naked women on top of the pool table and Massey advertising her girls. Finlay figures that Turelli got out of prison and wanted nothing to do with this type of behavior.

Greg interrogates Massey, who makes a quip about prostitution and Vegas. She tells him if he arrests her, she’d be out in minutes due to her connections, but Greg is focused on the murder. She assures him she didn’t kill Jimmy and that he had once been a role model for her. As an alibi, she tells Greg she was hosting a pool competition for her girls and she was at the Tangiers the entire night.

Hodgins goes to see Morgan, who is trying to recreate the crime scene with the pool table to see if she can prove Tate killed Turelli. Morgan makes a shot, but can’t replicate the blood pattern. Morgan tells Hodgins about playing pool when Finlay comes in. She tells them that a keycard found on Turelli’s body was from a condo. She processed the scene and found hairs belonging to Zoe Tate.

Zoe insists she didn’t sleep with Turelli. She had gone to stay with him due to fighting with Tate. After being pressed by Cooper and Crawford, she admits she and Cal were doing a scam called ‘Honor Hustle’ where she’d flirt with a rich guy and Cal would play pool poorly and use her in order to get the men to play for their money. Cooper realizes that since Jimmy was worried for Zoe, he was playing to help her. Cal had left upset after losing and Zoe tells them around 3 am, she heard Jimmy leave the house

The police go back to the apartment to find Tate dead with a bullet wound to the forehead. Greg pulls a bullet out of the couch and asks Dave about time of death. He had been killed just a few hours earlier. Crawford thinks Zoe did it, but Cooper told Greg she was in custody all morning. The entire house has been ransacked, meaning the killer was looking for something. Greg looks around and figures that Tate kept whatever he was hiding close to him. Greg finds Tate’s hat and finds a flash drive hiding inside.

Sara and Greg find photos of Zoe Tate with her marks, meaning it was most likely extortion and that Cal was in on it since he was in possession of the photos. But Greg found out that Tate was broke, so Zoe probably had a different partner and Cal found out about the scheme and wanted in.

Cooper tells Morgan that Zoe got a lawyer so she won’t give her partner up. Morgan tells him she finally realized she used the wrong trick shot and the missing ball they were chasing lost diameter each time it rolled. Due to photos at the Rails website and making her own replica, Morgan realized the missing ball was an ice ball that melted. She also tells Cooper that she had found bourbon mixed in to the blood meaning the killer had been drinking bourbon. Since the ice ball would have saliva, Morgan can get their killer’s DNA. When Morgan gets the results, Hodgins comes in thinking it was Massey. But Morgan reveals it was Mary Haymond, the driver from earlier who hit Turelli.

Cooper and Crawford interview Haymond, where they reveal they know she is the president of DeRosa Holdings. They tell her they know Massey worked for her in prostituion and that she was Zoe’s partner, with Crawford claiming Zoe told them everything. Haymond tells them she may have had that type of business, but she didn’t kill anyone. Crawford tells her that they found the gun used to murder Tate at her salon. She reveals Turelli had found out about the extortion and had thought Cal was the one who knew about it. She set up a meeting with Turelli, who was going to go to the cops, but Haymond beat him before he could. She had buried him but when she saw he was alive in the road, Mary ran him down.

Cooper asks Crawford about lying to the suspect, to which Crawford responds, “Best kind of hustle.” In the lab, Morgan offers to play pool against Hodgins while left-handed so he has a shot of winning. Hodgins hits the ball and he manages to get a few balls into the holes.

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